1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an adhesive tape joining apparatus that joins an adhesive tape to a semiconductor wafer and a ring frame, or to a semiconductor wafer. In particular, this invention relates to a technique of loading and unloading the adhesive tape to and from the apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
One conventional adhesive tape joining apparatus has a tape supply mechanism and a tape collecting section arranged in parallel above or below a holding table for supplying an adhesive tape to a semiconductor wafer and a ring frame that are held on the holding table or to only the semiconductor wafer held on the holding table. For instance, a master roll of the adhesive tape and a winding section that winds up a residual tape cut in a wafer shape are arranged in parallel so as to sandwich the holding table. Moreover, another conventional adhesive tape joining apparatus has a master roll of a carrier tape to which a precut adhesive tape cut in advance in a semiconductor wafer shape is joined and held with a given pitch and a roll that collects the carrier tape after separating the precut adhesive tape so as to sandwich a holding table. See Japanese Patent No. 3888754.
However, the conventional adhesive tape joining apparatus have the following drawbacks.
Specifically, a semiconductor wafer tends to have a larger diameter and a reduced thickness due to high density packing in recent years. In order to meet this requirement, a surface-protective adhesive tape or dicing tape has a larger width. In addition, the adhesive tape and the dicing tape have an increased thickness to give rigidity to the wafer. Moreover, the adhesive tape and the dicing tape need to have a sufficient length for reducing replacement frequency of the roll to an apparatus body to improve working efficiency.
Consequently, the master roll with the wound adhesive tape tends to be larger in size and weight. Accordingly, it is difficult to manually load the master roll, the roll of the residual tape, and the roll of the carrier tape, etc., to and from the apparatus.